Italy Volume I: The Sangro to Cassino

I: The Winter Line

(i)

IN his memoirs Macdonald, one of Napoleon's marshals,
described the battle he lost on the Katzbach with hardly a reference to the enemy but with exhaustive detail about the mud and
the rain. At this point in his narrative the historian of 2 New
Zealand Division feels sympathy for the disingenuous marshal.
For though the pugnacious spirit of the Germans suffered no one
to forget their existence, the weather now became chief arbiter of
the field.

For more than three weeks after Christmas Day the Division's
war was an affair of silent watches and ambuscade, sharp patrol
encounters, spasmodic but often highly disagreeable exchanges of
fire, anxiety over communications, the discomfort of cold, damp and
mud. Unpleasant as it was for all the fighting troops, life was
especially miserable and tense for the infantry forward on Fontegrande, where on still nights the two front lines were almost within
whispering distance. There, movement by day or noise by night
invited the attention of the sniper or the mortar crew. Shelter had
to be sought in stone farmhouses. Reliefs had to be frequent. Supplies
of all kinds had to come up after dark on the backs of mules. Rain
was followed by snow and snow by slush. But the war had to go on,
and the New Zealanders' part in it was to prevent the reinforcement
of other fronts from theirs. While counterfeiting aggressive aims,
they were content to hold the ground they had already won.
On 17 January they were relieved to join the Fifth Army for the
offensive just beginning west of the Apennines.

(ii)

If any hoped that the attack of 24 December might have a
profitable sequel they were quickly disappointed. The ground, soggy
from the rain and whipped into creamy mud by the tanks, was too
slippery for movement in the fog and cold of Christmas Day. The
minefields ahead of 28 Battalion and the critical state of Duncan's
road also discouraged exploitation by the tanks. Christmas Day was
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the first of the defensive days that filled up the Division's calendar
until it left this front.

Little distinguished it from other days for troops in the line, but
those in reserve or not on urgent duties, making the best possible
imitation of Christmas at home, managed to animate an observance
into a festival. Special rations of meat, fruit and beer were supplemented almost everywhere by local supplies of wine, and every man
received a Patriotic Fund parcel. To their men assembled at dinner
commanding officers repeated the annual wish that this should be
their last Christmas away from home and were rewarded with the
annual applause, now perhaps more credulous than in the past.
Among other ways, jollity found an outlet in the wearing of irregular
headdress, and the General took occasion to remonstrate mildly
against the appearance of straw hats and hats of purple paper, which,
according to his diary, ‘did not appear particularly appropriate for
Italy's winter weather’.

Tactically, the last week of 1943 was an interim. Deadlock on the
divisional front was a palpable fact, but not until New Year's Eve
was a policy formulated to acknowledge it. As the year drew to its
close, General Montgomery recommended a temporary halt in the
Eighth Army's offensive. Though Ortona fell to the Canadians on
28 December, every inch of the advance was as fiercely contested
on the coastal sector as on the New Zealanders'. Montgomery feared
that if the attack was pressed in conditions forbidding the full
deployment of armoured and air support, the infantry would be so
depleted as to leave an unbalanced force when spring came. He was
also aware that he would leave soon for the United Kingdom to
take command of 21 Army Group and wished to hand over a
tidy front to his successor. General Alexander agreed with this
reasoning and planned to transfer the main weight of his armies
to the western side of the peninsula, where the country in which the
Fifth Army was fighting promised better progress. In the east it
remained for the Eighth Army to exert continued pressure.

Accordingly, on 30 December 13 Corps defined its task. It was
‘to contain on its front at least the present number of German
formations; to inflict on them as much loss as possible with patrols
and artillery fire; and by every possible means to lead them to suppose
that an attack is imminent’. The New Zealand Division was to hold
its present front and to site its armour and reserves to secure the
Castelfrentano ridge in all circumstances.

Freyberg's instructions of 31 December designated the future
policy of the Division as one of ‘offensive defence’. To hold its
ground, to contain the enemy and to keep up its active spirit, the
Division was to patrol and fire aggressively. Static methods of
defence, such as the use of wire, were to be avoided if possible. In
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order to allocate and relieve troops more systematically and to clarify
their tasks, the Division's area was divided into four sub-sectors:
Fontegrande-Orsogna, the main front, then held by 6 Brigade and
6 Parachute Battalion; Salarola, facing the Melone road-fork, held
by 4 Parachute Battalion; Castelfrentano ridge, the reserve area
occupied by 5 Brigade; and Bianco–Barone, the steep south-western
flank, lightly held by a company of 5 Parachute Battalion and two
squadrons of the Divisional Cavalry.

Decisions on high policy entailed not only this reorganisation
within the Division but also new dispositions on its flanks. On 27–28
December 13 British Infantry Brigade had relieved 2 Independent
Parachute Brigade of responsibility for the Aventino River sector,
including Casoli, and the New Zealanders were now flanked on both
sides by 5 Division, with its 15 Brigade on their right in the Poggiofiorito sector and 13 Brigade on their left. The 5th was the first of
the British divisions destined to be transferred in Alexander's shift of
weight to the west, and early in the New Year it had to be replaced.
On the left, the New Zealanders' new neighbour was 78 Division,
which extended to its right in the Casoli area and passed from the
command of Eighth Army to that of 13 Corps. On the right, however, the New Zealand Division had to fill the vacancy from its own
means. This it did by moving 2 Parachute Brigade into the sector
between Crecchio and Arielli, where it was in touch with 8 Indian
Division, the left-hand formation of 5 Corps. The paratroops' commitments on the left were redistributed among New Zealand units.
On Brecciarola ridge D Company 28 Battalion took over from
6 Parachute Battalion, in the Salarola sub-sector 4 Parachute Battalion was relieved by 22 Battalion, and on Colle Bianco a company
of 5 Parachute Battalion by B Squadron Divisional Cavalry. These
adjustments, as tedious in the execution as in the telling, were
anticipated and hindered by a great snowstorm.

(iii)

The snow set to rest any doubts about the wisdom of coming to
terms with the Italian winter. ‘General January’ turned traitor. For
though it had been predicted, the snow caught the Division tactically
with its plans only just laid and physically prepared hardly at all.
The weather, which had been sometimes wet and always cold for a
week past and overcast and threatening on New Year's Eve, broke
in the last two or three hours of 1943. A blizzard blew out of the
mountains to lay one of the heaviest snowfalls within living memory
as a boundary between the old year and the new. On New Year's
morning snow lay about a foot deep, with drifts up to four feet
deep in places.

‘This stops things all right,’ wrote the General in his diary, ‘and it is a
question of existing without worrying much about the war…. We won't
use up too much sympathy on the front line troops but … the joy of
occupying a forward weapon pit (with no special rates for rain, or sleet or
snow) can be imagined. People in houses last night were lucky. Canvas does
not stand snow too well. On the bivvies, indeed on all tents, the snow
banked up till they fell on the occupants. There are a lot of wet and
bedraggled people about this morning, many with nothing dry at all and that
includes blankets.’

Every possible building was requisitioned, and troops already
under the shelter of roofs moved up to make room for the involuntary heroes of the storm.

But many had more pressing duties than the drying of blankets,
boots and clothing. Like a man frozen, the Division had first to
restore the circulation to its body. The civilian telephone lines which
had been adapted for the Division's use collapsed under the ice-loading, dragging the poles down into the snow in a tangle of wires.
Field cables had to be laid to replace them. Meanwhile, all wireless
links were kept open. Vehicle movement came to a standstill. Roads
blocked by snowdrifts had to be cleared by shovel, bulldozer and
grader in sleet and snow that continued into the afternoon of the
1st. On Route 84, a mile west of Castelfrentano, and the northern
Guardiagrele road, where the drifts were exceptionally deep, the
work after New Year's Day went on by night, since both points
were targets for German gunners, Tiki bridge was temporarily
closed. The slit trenches of the infantry filled with water when the
thaw set in. Pits for guns, machine guns and mortars were likewise
flooded and weapons had to be moved to new pits or fired from
ground level beside the old.

The snow fell on all alike. The Germans, too, had lines down and
roads impassable. The men of 146 Regiment, coming up to replace
the paratroops on the right wing of 26 Panzer Division, arrived wet
to the skin and dog-tired after being on the march continuously for
about twenty hours. They were in such poor shape and they had
lost so many mules by the way that the relief, planned for 4 a.m. on
1 January, was not complete until 9 p.m. on the 2nd.

Except for blizzards on the night of 4–5 January and again on
the 6th, the weather was fine and sunny until the Division left the
Orsogna region. The thaw and the traffic converted roads into
channels of mud that could be kept open only by uninterrupted hard
work. Off the roads, the snow still lay on the ground, and the
Division's last fortnight at Orsogna must be pictured against a
background of white. Men plugging across country found that at
every step they broke through the thin, hard crust into a cold slush
that oozed in over their boot-tops. The weight of battle order or
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any heavy load drove troops to the surer footing of worn tracks,
however muddy.

(iv)

The three weeks after Christmas call for description rather than
narration, and for the most part particular events must sink their
identity in the general impression. On Fontegrande ridge (to begin
with the most important of the four sub-sectors) occasional raids,
the continual expectation of them, and constant exposure to short-range fire kept nerves on edge and necessitated frequent reliefs.
Brigades were rotated within the Division, companies within battalions and platoons within companies.

Sixth Brigade became complete in the line after dark on 27
December, when 24 Battalion, earlier relieved on Brecciarola by
6 Parachute Battalion, replaced the Maoris in the cemetery area
immediately north of Orsogna. The timetable issued with the
operational instruction of 31 December envisaged the relief of
infantry brigades every eight days. Accordingly, the two brigades
exchanged sub-sectors on the night of 2–3 January, 5 Brigade
resuming charge of the Fontegrande front and 6 Brigade going back
into reserve near Castelfrentano. These dispositions remained unchanged until the Division left the Eighth Army in mid-January,
as warning of an early move was received before the next relief
was due to be made. Of the three 5 Brigade battalions, the 21st and
23rd went up during 2 January and that night and the 28th the next
night to hold the line in that order from the right. During these
reliefs telephone lines and sometimes the heavy weapons of supporting units were left in place for the incoming troops.

Opposite the New Zealanders comparative stability succeeded the
hectic switchings and the chopping and changing of the German
formations before Christmas. With the weather for a staunch ally,
the German command no longer had to juggle so desperately with
sparse resources. On the Division's right the tried 26 Panzer Division received I and III Battalions 146 Regiment as replacements for
6 Parachute Regiment on its right flank, extending to about the
cemetery, in circumstances already described, but this was the only
change. Farther south, 65 Division gave way at the end of December
to 334 Infantry Division, an inexperienced formation which had
recently been re-formed in France after being wiped out in Tunisia,
but which came to win a reputation second only to that of 1 Parachute Division among German divisions in Italy. Profiting from his
experience with 65 Division and 90 Panzer Grenadier Division,
General Herr deliberately allotted this new division the easier sector
next to the mountains. Its left flank, which was opposite the forward
New Zealand brigade immediately north of Orsogna, was committed
page 153
to one of its own units, I Battalion 755 Infantry Regiment, but the
town of Orsogna remained in the devoted care of III Battalion
4 Parachute Regiment. These were finally the only paratroops facing
the Division; the rest had been filtered eastwards to the coastal
sector, where 1 Parachute Division gradually assembled.

For the infantry manning the crucial defences in the Fontegrande
area, the holding of the winter line was no occasion for relaxing.
Neither side essayed any large attack, but if there was no spectacular
onset there was a great deal of lethal bickering. The opposing troops
were at such close quarters that something like personal venom
crept into their exchanges, along with a determination not to be
outwitted. Yet even this vendetta was tempered by a soldiers' compact against the weather, and some mutual restraint was observed in
the destruction of the buildings that alone made life supportable in
the front line.

The siting of the farmhouses and outbuildings largely governed
the pattern of the defences. Infantry posts centred on these stone
structures were organised to catch the whole of the front in a net of
interlocking fire. The houses themselves were fortified. Doors and
(where they existed) windows were sandbagged, and loopholes were
driven through the walls to open up fields of fire – a precaution all
the more necessary since most houses had doors facing east and were
blind toward the enemy.1 Shelters were dug under the floors to give
protection from shells and bombs. Slit trenches and weapon pits,
mostly occupied by night, guarded the approaches to houses, and
sentries, as statuesque as the cold would permit, kept watch. Tripwires attached to warning igniters were laid but little use was made
of barbed wire or mines, those parents of a defensive mentality.

Many platoon posts were open to close enemy inspection, some
from the flank by observers in Orsogna, others on forward slopes
from the front by observers across the gully of the Arielli. This fact
imposed habits of stealth and immobility – and of inhospitality
towards visitors, who were welcome only when they came by covered
ways. The penalties of being seen or heard were usually prompt and
severe. Snipers, machine-gunners and observers controlling the fire
of mortars and guns were posted at vantage points in houses
occupied by the Germans, and familiarity with the ground lent
accuracy to the fire. By day both sides carried on the war and beguiled
their leisure by harassing each other with all the weapons they could
command, and by night the guns fired their prearranged tasks and
machine guns were laid on fixed lines. Targets were suggested by
direct observation, indirect deduction from the study of maps, the
reports of patrols and listening posts, and by sheer guesswork.

The spur north of the Arielli stream which the Divisional Commander had refused to relinquish was of all tenements the most
uncomfortable. The Germans knew that it looked into their lines
and pounded it with mortar and. artillery fire in the hope that it
would be given up as not worth the casualties. Day after day ‘the
feature 1 km. north of the cemetery’ was noticed by the panzer
division's diarist as having been engaged by mortars and artillery.
It was also a favourite destination for enemy patrols, and after
27 December sentries had to be posted each night on the flanks.
Surprisingly little harm came to the New Zealanders on this beaten
patch of earth, but about twenty-four hours after their departure
the Germans seized twelve prisoners from the relieving force without
loss to themselves.

‘Jittery Ridge’ earned its name, and so did the whole of the
Fontegrande area, to which the name came to be applied. For war
has a kind of Newtonian law, whereby the strain on troops varies
directly as the product of the opposing masses and inversely as the
square of the distance between them. Fontegrande was a close front
and a congested one. The tension of lying in wait for prowlers or
listening for the soft sibilance of a mortar bomb in flight became
exhausting, for no hour of the day or night would be certainly
undisturbed. Supplies came up on mules after dark or before dawn,
and for those not on patrol or picket duty there was always work
to be done in the strengthening of defences. The scrape and clink
of digging heard nightly in the enemy's lines showed that he was
doing the same. Life was monotonous without the restfulness that
monotony normally implies.

Like other occupations, soldiering can be divided into doing and
suffering. The suffering of the infantrymen on Fontegrande has been
sufficiently indicated. The doing, apart from the firing of infantry
weapons, appeals to tank crews and gunners to fire theirs and the
construction of defences, consisted mainly in the sending and receiving of patrols. At all times during this static period it was necessary
to maintain standing patrols, contact patrols to guard gaps between
defended localities and listening posts. Nevertheless, the war of
patrols may be said to have passed through three phases.

Until the New Year both sides seemed satisfied to explore each
other's layout and to follow up the discovery of defences by bombarding them. Patrols from 6 Brigade reconnoitred houses, tracks
and likely natural features, and attempts were made to set booby-traps in houses frequented by the enemy. Germans were seen and
heard on these excursions and once or twice when they returned the
visit; but considering the confined area in which the patrols were
working, skirmishes were remarkably few.

The second phase, in the opening week of the New Year, was
more exciting. The unusually spirited patrolling of the Germans
won them brief but undeniable mastery of no-man's-land. The New
Zealanders took time to digest the implications of the Divisional
Commander's instruction of 31 December, the snow brought fighting
to a temporary standstill, and the relief of 6 Brigade by 5 Brigade
extended over two nights early in January.

The Germans, too, had been snowbound and on this front they
were fresh in the line, but they were quicker to go to work. One
reason may have been that they were on their mettle, I and III
Battalions 146 Regiment with a reputation to repair, I Battalion
755 Regiment with one to make. More certainly, they were under
orders to patrol strongly from a command that was still apprehensive
of an early attack. In an appreciation of 4 January, 26 Panzer Division noted the movement of troops in the area east and south-east of Orsogna and the massing of artillery in the same area. These
guns were ‘quietly but continuously ranging on our supply routes,
headquarters and FDLs. The enemy is keeping his wireless traffic
very secure. All enemy patrols are carefully stripped of papers or
insignia which might betray their formation. All these indicate an
attack in the near future. The division thinks that the main thrust will
come along the roads leading north from Orsogna and Guardiagrele.’
The discomfiture of the New Zealanders was therefore due to
their success in tactical deception. For five days after coming into the
line 5 Brigade was too intent on securing a firm base to send out
reconnaissance or fighting patrols and in that time the enemy held
the upper hand.

The first shock of German audacity fell on 15 Platoon 28 Battalion, occupying a house west of the cemetery and only about
150 yards from the enemy line. Snow fell again on the night of
4–5 January, and before dawn twelve or more raiders in white
clothing approached with muffled steps under cover of the blizzard.
They caught the Maoris asleep and entered the house unchallenged
before opening fire. Once awake, the Maoris ran smartly back
towards the Ortona road for help, giving the alarm to three supporting tanks. Machine-gun fire from the tanks and from neighbouring
infantry posts drove the patrol away, and when the Maori platoon
returned to the house it found it empty except for one dead German.
He belonged to a battalion of 755 Regiment which was already
known to be holding the sector. The affray cost the Maoris one killed
and two wounded.

Next night, though the infantry were alert, it was the turn of
D Company 23 Battalion, thrust forward on the spur beyond the
Arielli. A house occupied by 18 Platoon was attacked about 2.45 in
the morning by a patrol of eight or ten Germans, who, like those
page 156
the night before, were dressed in snow-suits. They converged on the
house from windward, concealed in a flurry of sleet and by the pitch
darkness. They exchanged hand grenades with the sentries posted
outside and then fired machine carbines into the house. In this way
they wounded four men without entering the house and made off
before the platoon could organise its defence. These daring and
skilful raiders from 146 Regiment apparently crowned their night's
work by speedily reporting the location of the house, for immediately
after their withdrawal D Company was severely mortared until the
New Zealand artillery silenced the fire. The patrol also took back the
body of a dead New Zealander, thus fulfilling its main purpose.
From the body the Germans were able to identify 23 Battalion and,
from the report of the patrol, to fill in some enemy-defended localities on their intelligence maps.

The losses inflicted by the two enemy raids led Brigadier
Kippenberger to make suggestions to his battalion commanders for
the more efficient defending and picketing of posts by night.
Instructions were given that the sentries guarding houses should be
at least twenty yards away from the buildings and that some means
of quick communication between them should be instituted. Doors
and entrances were to be barricaded and made secure against sudden
entry. Such precautions were far from superfluous, for on the night
of 6–7 January – the third in succession – white-clad German patrols
were on the prowl round the New Zealand lines. A Company
23 Battalion saw about sixteen men moving across its front just
after midnight and a little later C Company dispersed a party of
eight Germans with a few volleys. It was a night of uneasy vigilance
along the Fontegrande front. Vague scuffling noises and shadowy
movements announced the presence of German patrols, but the
night was so dark and stormy that no direct contact was made.
Next morning, however, the fresh footprints of men and dogs were
found round some of 23 Battalion's infantry and mortar posts.
Rumours having previously circulated that the enemy was using dogs
on his patrols, the order was now given to shoot on sight any dog
seen on the front.

After passively enduring German provocation for three nights,
5 Brigade was thoroughly roused, and the night of 7–8 January
brought an opportunity for reprisal and for dampening the enemy's
ardour. First, A Company 23 Battalion warded off a party of
Germans approaching its spur, but it was left to the Maoris to
strike a more stinging blow. About half an hour before midnight
sentries of 12 Platoon of B Company 28 Battalion (Second-Lieutenant Takurua),1 watching from the top story of a house a few

page 157
hundred yards forward of the cemetery, observed movement in the
moonlit snow. Coming towards them along the railway line from the
south-west were seven Germans in extended order. The alarm was
given. Two sections manned the top windows and waited in silence
until the patrol approached to within 30 yards. At that short range
the defenders' bursts of fire killed five of the Germans and appeared
to have wounded the two who escaped. About quarter of an hour
later mortars and machine guns engaged the house, perhaps in
response to the signal flare put up by the Germans when they came
under the sudden attack. So heavy was the enemy fire that a Maori
sent out to search the corpses could examine only two which carried
no means of identification. The patrol had come, in fact, from
755 Regiment.

The Maori success was more than a well-managed stroke of
vengeance; it helped to swing the tactical pendulum in favour of
the Division, for after this reverse German patrols no longer
seriously troubled the New Zealand forward posts on the Fontegrande front. The Germans were by no means willing to resign the
initiative. On the contrary, they were under the most authoritative
orders to maintain it. Even as the ill-fated patrol was leaving on its
mission, Tenth Army was urgently directing 76 Panzer Corps to
discover the movement of formations on its front. The German
High Command (OKW) had called for preliminary reports by
14 January, if humanly possible, and the corps was to patrol methodically and to take prisoners from every enemy division. On the
morning of the 9th Kesselring told Vietinghoff that he was certain
the enemy had ‘got something prepared’ north of Orsogna and at
Melone, and received an assurance that strong fighting patrols had
been ordered out to take ‘a lot of prisoners’.

Yet on the 8th and again on the 11th 26 Panzer Division affirmed
a policy of caution, instructing its regiments to confine their patrolling to observation, to putting out listening posts at night and carefully probing the enemy outpost line. In part (the facts must not be
over-dramatised) it was the moon, now nearly full, that determined
this decision. ‘If the bright nights continue,’ read a directive of the
panzer division, ‘patrolling is to be limited to observation patrols.
No strong fighting patrols until the weather changes’. And in its
report on the patrol losses of 7–8 January, 334 Division blamed the
deep snow and the brightness of the night. But moonlight does not
kill, and it was in part the lively reactions of the New Zealanders,
described by the Germans as ‘jumpy and alert’, that led the two
enemy divisions to interpret their orders with such wide discretion.

During the last week before its relief – the third phase of the
‘line-holding’ on Fontegrande – 5 Brigade patrolled actively within
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the limits set by the weather and the somewhat crowded and hugger-mugger state of the front. Despite General Dempsey's orders to
obtain identifications of the German units opposite the Division, the
moonlight kept all patrols home for two nights running and on a
third night almost caused a serious mishap when a Maori patrol,
having postponed its starting time until moonset without notice, was
fired on by one of 23 Battalion's posts.

More than once New Zealand patrols, sent to leave observers
or booby-traps or to lay ambushes in houses, found themselves
forestalled by the enemy. On the forward slope of 23 Battalion's
spur north of the Arielli there was a house which a German outpost
had been seen to occupy nightly at 6.30. At 5 p.m. on the 8th,
therefore, six men left A Company to form a reception party for that
evening, but instead it fell to them to be received. Thirty yards from
the house the patrol was challenged and fired on by three sentries,
one of whom was killed in the ensuing exchange. Summoned by a
tracer signal, about eighteen Germans in white ran into the house
and appeared at the windows. They were greeted by violent fire from
the patrol, and in high excitement and some confusion pursued the
withdrawal of the New Zealanders with wildly erratic bursts from
their machine guns.

(v)

The Fontegrande area, it will be remembered, was only the most
active of four sectors facing the enemy on the Division's front.
On the other three we may dwell more lightly. The sector on the
right between the villages of Crecchio and Arielli became a responsibility of the Division when 2 Parachute Brigade relieved 15 Brigade
of 5 Division there, as noted earlier. The relief took place by stages
between the night of 4–5 January and the next evening. The right
flank was occupied by 4 Parachute Battalion, with companies in the
hamlets of Salciaroli and Consalvi; the centre by 5 Parachute Battalion, with its most advanced company pushed forward to within
a few hundred yards of the eastern outskirts of Arielli village; and
the left, neighbouring 21 Battalion, by 6 Parachute Battalion, with
company positions around Poggiofiorito.

The paratroops held their line in conditions similar to those
farther south and west. The going was no easier, the peasant's
casa, as elsewhere, was the nucleus of each system of local defence,
the same desultory rain of shell and mortar fire was endured and
returned. Poggiofiorito, indeed, was more persistently battered by
gunfire than any other spot in the New Zealand area. But in one
respect life was simpler. Between the Germans manning the Arielli
stream and the FDLs taken over by the paratroops lay about 1000
yards of no-man's-land. Even after the night of 9–10 January, when
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all three battalions advanced their forward posts between 200 and
600 yards towards the enemy line, contact was not so oppressively
close as on Fontegrande. The paratroops took full advantage of the
room they had to work in and gave the enemy a bitter taste of their
quality.

Events conformed to the familiar pattern. At first the enemy
ruled the front. A raiding party inflicted casualties at Salciaroli
before dawn on the 5th and an outpost at Le Piane wounded two and
captured six of a fighting patrol of paratroops the following night.
After the forward move of the battalions, however, the paratroops
had their front firmly under control. The enterprise of their reconnaissance and fighting patrols is well illustrated by their tally of
eleven prisoners taken in seven different actions within four days.
These captures from 26 Reconnaissance Unit and I and II Battalions
67 Panzer Grenadier Regiment gave a picture, though not quite a
complete picture, of the enemy dispositions opposite the brigade.
The achievement was the more impressive since 5 Brigade had not
by this time identified the two battalions of 146 Regiment facing it
in the line, nor was it even thought that fresh troops had been
brought in to replace the German paratroops, whose departure was
known.

(vi)

The Salarola sub-sector, on the left of 5 Brigade, had seen no
more than skirmishing for a month past when 22 Battalion relieved
4 Parachute Battalion on 3 January. The road junction at Melone
had always loomed larger in the German than in the New Zealand
mind as a potential point of attack, and the Germans continued to
watch over it with a jealous and suspicious eye. The fact was that
on this front the Division desired nothing better than to be left
alone; and the configuration of the country helped it to have its way
inexpensively. Although the sub-sector covered a front of more than
two miles from Colle Chiamato to Colle Bianco, only about 600 yards
of it, on either side of the northern Guardiagrele road, needed to be
held in strength. This road ran along the crest of a watershed,
through country impassable to any but small patrols, with steep
ravines carrying the headwaters of the Moro running away to the
north-east on one side, and on the other to the south the rugged
gorge of the Sant' Antonio stream.

Consequently, most of the action in these days occurred on the
negotiable high ground between the two gorges, where the village of
Salarola was the pivot of the New Zealanders' defences as Melone,
with Colle Martino behind it, was of the Germans'. Here both sides
employed their artillery, mortars and machine guns on harassing
tasks. The main enemy line between Orsogna and Guardiagrelepage 160
which followed the road linking the two towns, was manned by two
battalions of 754 Regiment and one of 756 Regiment, all belonging
to the new 334 Division. Twenty-second Battalion had its strength
in and around Salarola, the forward company being astride the road
ahead of the village and about 1000 yards short of Melone. Of two
long ridges running north-east off the road the nearer, the Piano delle
Fanti, was regularly patrolled, and the other was visited by patrols.
Most of the houses on the forward ridge were booby-trapped, but one
was found to be occupied by Germans, who allowed the patrol to
withdraw in peace.

Clashes were the exception on this front. The only casualty
certainly inflicted by 22 Battalion was that of a signaller of 111 Field
Regiment, Royal Artillery, one of a party repairing lines which was
mistaken for the enemy as it approached an isolated observation
post at dead of night after the post had earlier been put on the alert
by a German patrol.

(vii)

The last sub-sector, to the south-west of the Division, from Colle
Bianco to Colle Barone, was wild country overlooked by the great
white flanks of the Majella, where the Germans sometimes patrolled
on skis; but it was more restful than the other fronts. The trade in
harassing fire was slack, and no direct encounter with the enemy is
recorded, though patrols explored westwards towards the lower
slopes of the mountain.

The area was taken over from a company of 5 Parachute Battalion
early in January by a composite New Zealand force of non-infantrymen cast in an infantry role – B Squadron Divisional Cavalry, 34
Anti-Tank Battery and two troops of 33 Anti-Tank Battery, and
7 and 9 Machine Gun Platoons. The main posts were on Colle
Bianco and at other points on and forward of the southern Guardiagrele road, but some anti-tank men and machine-gunners defended
the secluded village of Fontana Ascigno to the south, accessible only
by rough mountain tracks. On the 6th this post among the snow-covered hills made neighbourly contact with men of the Argyll and
Sutherland Highlanders, who had come in on the right flank of
36 Brigade of 78 Division when it relieved 13 Brigade of 5 Division.

The troops in the Bianco–Barone sector had to be supplied by
mule trains, which made heavy weather of the journey up over
slushy, winding tracks, and it became necessary to clear alternative
tracks to the forward posts. A Vickers machine-gunner who helped
to carry wire up to Fontana Ascigno wrote of ‘an exhausting trip
with the bloody mules stumbling and slipping in deep drifts of snow,
packs slipping, the Ites yelling and tugging’.

(viii)

What of the supporting arms during the winter stalemate?
January in the Abruzzi was no time for tanks, and few calls were
made on the services of the armoured regiments. Tracked movement
was, of course, harsh to road surfaces and difficult or impossible off
them. The policy was therefore to use tanks sparingly in the forward
areas and not as a rule in advance of infantry battalion headquarters.
Thus as soon as enough anti-tank guns had been deployed on
Fontegrande the tanks were withdrawn behind the Ortona road.
Here, at Poggiofiorito on the right, on Brecciarola in the centre and
around Salarola and San Eusanio on the left, elements of the
armoured regiments were stationed to support the infantry by the
harassing fire of their guns and as an insurance against the unlikely
(and unrealised) chance of enemy tank attack. Several of the squadrons used the time to rest and refit, and the work of retrieving
disabled and bemired tanks was pressed on with much energy and
with little concern for the hindrances of mud, snow and mortar fire.
Between 1 and 16 January twenty-five tanks were recovered from the
forward areas, some from the upper end of Sfasciata and the Ortona
road being dragged out of minefields by a tractor. Even so, several
tanks stranded in or before the FDLs were made a bequest to the
incoming division. The tank strength of the armoured brigade was
further restored by the delivery of six new Shermans to the
regiments.

However listless and inert a front may be, occupation can always
be found for the artillery, provided there is ammunition for the guns.
For a week after Christmas supply difficulties in the rear made it
necessary to ration 25-pounder ammunition to thirty rounds a gun
daily. After receiving 20,000 rounds on 24 December alone, the field
regiments had to economise upon no more than 15,000 in the following week, but candour demands the comment that, in supplies of
gun ammunition, what was penury to the New Zealanders was often
to the Germans fabulous wealth.

The New Year's snow was as uncomfortable for the gunner as
for other soldiers, but it presented him in addition with certain
technical problems. Guns had to be winched out of snow-filled pits.
It seemed more difficult to keep ammunition dry from an insidious
thaw of snow than from honest, beating rain; and while damp
charges gave shells an uncertain travel, damp primers caused misfires
that put guns temporarily out of action. The sleet blinded observation
posts or shortened their vision, and even when the air was clear
and the sun sparkled on the snow the obliteration of all but the
boldest features of the landscape made observed fire slow and less
efficient. Predicted fire suffered too; for it seems that the abstruse
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and scrupulous mathematics of the command posts was often made
futile by changes of temperature swift and extreme enough to invalidate meteor telegrams, range tables and other technical aids.

To crown all, our own troops on the busiest sector, Fontegrande,
were no more than a few hundred yards from the enemy, and the fire
they called for at short notice was frequently upon ‘close targets’,
which require the most deliberate and meticulous ranging. The worst
fear of the gunner is to drop rounds among his own troops, and
when this mishap occurred and recurred during this period it must
have been small consolation to the New Zealand artillery to know
that a curious conjunction made it almost inevitable.

The main tasks of the New Zealand gunners were to fire by day
upon opportunity targets and both by night and day to harass
Orsogna and Guardiagrele, the enemy infantry localities and communications. Targets deeper into the enemy lines, including his gun
positions, were mostly reserved for the heavier guns of 6 Army
Group, Royal Artillery, but roving sections of 25-pounders were sited
well forward to disturb the enemy as far away as the southern outskirts of Chieti. One of these sections dropped its trails among the
FDLs of the British paratroops. Though not allowed to fire by day
and by night only simultaneously with rearward guns, this section
attracted so much notice from enemy mortars that it rejoined its
battery after about three nights.

Psychological warfare – the fact if not the name – has long been
a function of artillery: the guns have been classic diffusers of the
terror. Modern techniques, which were largely evolved in the desert,
of rapidly massing the fire of many guns on a single target have
tended to confirm this traditional role. Orsogna itself during this
time was almost a daily target for divisional concentrations. Sometimes the drubbing it received from the ground was accompanied
or preceded by the attack of fighter-bombers. A combined bombardment on the 12th, after an earlier raid in which Kittybombers
dropped a new and destructive type of bomb, offered the defenders
an impressive show of violence. The same day 26 Panzer Division
forbade all traffic movement by day because of the recent heavy
casualties to motor transport. But the Division's artillery did not omit
more refined means of sapping the German morale. On 30 December propaganda pamphlets were showered into Orsogna by air-bursting shells, and on 2 January, after a day's postponement, the
four field regiments gave a display of virtuosity by spelling out the
words ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR FRITZ’ in letters 500 yards high on
the snowy slopes west and north of Orsogna. To press home the
advantage, as well as to burnish their skill, the gunners also fired
towards the end of their stay in the line a practice barrage lasting
twenty minutes in the area west of Arielli.

Air support was unavoidably intermittent. Though a Spitfire
patrol was flown daily over the lines, a low cloud ceiling or some
other impediment kept close-support aircraft out of the sky on many
days. When they could fly they proved the variety of their usefulness
by bombing Orsogna and Guardiagrele, rest and billet areas farther
to the rear, gun positions and roads, by strafing traffic and by
directing the fire of the New Zealand guns. Especially welcome was
their attack on two 170-millimetre guns which, firing from positions
about eight miles behind the front line south and east of Chieti,
had been like two nagging teeth in the head of the Division. One of
the guns was hit directly and did not trouble the Division again.
German airmen ventured out over this front very rarely. A sharp
raid by about twenty fighter-bombers on Poggiofiorito on the 11th
cost the enemy at least one aircraft, which was hit and exploded in
mid-air. The credit for its destruction was officially divided between
14 Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment and a British regiment in the area.

For the engineers the phrase ‘static warfare’ has only an ironical
application to the three weeks after Christmas. Theirs was a dynamic
war, with so much to do that Italian civilians again had to be
recruited to help, with ample scope for improvisation and with even
more than the usual need to undertake errands of mercy to drivers,
tank crews and gunners in distress. Engineers were employed in
hauling guns from waterlogged pits and excavating new ones,
constructing a landing ground for observation aircraft and erecting
Nissen huts, but these were slight drafts on their energies, and almost
the whole of their effort went into the road systems, especially after
the snowfall. They had responsibility for all roads north and west
of Route 84, but not for Route 84 itself. Their most constant preoccupation was with Duncan's road, which, it will be recalled, ran
from the crossing of the Moro at Hongi bridge up the stiff slope to
Sfasciata and along the ridge to the Ortona road. The track was
formed throughout its length by the end of December, but there was
a never-ending struggle to metal the road and keep it metalled.
Houses were blown up to provide brick and rubble for the foundations and thousands of tons of metal were transported from a nearby
quarry and laid. After it had been softened by weeks of wet weather,
snow blocked the road and then flooded it, slips came down in
cuttings and the sappers had to stand aside while passing traffic
cut deep ruts and buried the hard-won metal and corduroy in the
morass.

As the condition of the road varied, so restrictions on its use were
imposed and lifted, relaxed and tightened up. On Christmas Day
a divisional order confined the road to essential vehicles fully loaded,
forbade crowding and halting, instructed front-line troops to use
local water supplies where possible, and established a provost post
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at the Moro crossing to check all vehicles using the road. Two
days later it was closed for a few hours to virtually all traffic and
then reopened to jeeps only. On the 29th it was possible to relax
the prohibition in favour of 3-ton trucks carrying essential supplies
as far as the turning point on the crest of the ridge. So it went on
while the engineers slaved at their unforgiving task, sometimes
screened from enemy eyes by draped camouflage nets.

Everywhere roads had to be kept under continuous repair by men
wielding shovels, whose patience was sorely tried as thrashing
wheel chains and hissing tyres bespattered them with mud. The
blockage of roads by the snow dammed up the stream of traffic and
drew shellfire, and the work of clearing them engaged parties of
men from nearly all units. The northern Guardiagrele road was not
fully restored until the 7th, and it was the night of 7–8 January
before a bulldozer cleared the last few yards of slush from Duncan's
road.

Though on New Year's Day no supply vehicles could leave the
Division to bring up supplies because of the snowfall, thereafter
Army Service Corps convoys maintained their regular services, where
necessary deviating from the usual routes. On all three of the front-line sub-sectors mules served the forward troops. Jeeps would bring
supplies from unit rear echelons to agreed points as near the front
as possible, where the mule packs would be made up. The superiority
of primitive means of transport in rough weather was not, however,
without exception; and a certain piquancy attends the experience of
Lieutenant Brownlie1 and his party of fourteen trucks which was
despatched from 4 Reserve Mechanical Transport Company on
Boxing Day in search of mules. Before they could reach Agnone,
where the mules were to be loaded, he and his men became snowbound at Capracotta and had to be fed from the skies by parachute.

(ix)

The six weeks or more spent before Orsogna gave the lineaments
of the region time to impress themselves on the minds of the New
Zealanders. It is not always the lasting features of a landscape but
often those of a very transient nature that soldiers remember, for
whenever an army pauses it insensibly works a change upon its
environment. It builds new roads and alters the course of old ones,
lonely places suddenly become the signposted hub of a busy traffic
and fortuitous landmarks appear – the burnt-out tank pushed off the
road to rust, the festoons of signal wire, the wayside encampments
or dumps of ammunition. Memory may fix upon some such temporary

page 165
grouping of objects and dub it for ever Orsogna. Or it may
dwell on more permanent sights – the narrow streets and sharp
corners of Castelfrentano; the squalor of Spaccarelli; the gaunt
majesty of the Majella; the grandiose pile of the brickworks, useful
to the Division as a source of rubble for roadmaking and to the
enemy as a ranging mark; or the thin, tutelary church tower of
Orsogna, which in spite of all that airmen and gunners could aim
at it continued to stand and to sprinkle its chimes indifferently
across the snow to soldiers from afar and to peasants born and bred
within sound of its bells.

Another part of the subtle interplay between armies and places is
the bestowal of names to supplement those on the map, names that
begin in utility and end in sentiment, surviving in the traditional lore
of an army when the places that bore them have long been left
behind. West of Castelfrentano, for example, there was the ‘Mad
Mile’, a notorious stretch of road that could be viewed end on from
Orsogna. No one dawdled on this registered target, for the enemy
could and often did bring down upon it the almost instant fire of a
weapon indubitably large and reputedly a 170-millimetre gun beyond
the range of our own artillery. ‘Shell Alley’ was a less frequented
but equally hazardous stretch of road between ‘Hellfire Corner’ and
Spaccarelli. Besides names horrific like these and ‘Jittery Ridge’ and
names coined by the mere indolence of the Anglo-Saxon tongue,
which corrupted the Italian's Archi into the New Zealander's
Archey, there were names personal (like Armstrong's road and
Hunter's bridge), names nostalgic (like tiki and hongi bridges),
and names arbitrary (like Lobe bridge).

Orsogna's genius loci expressed itself in its inhabitants as well as
in its landmarks, and of these inhabitants the Division saw more than
it might have expected. Desert experience supplied no parallel to
the incongruous way in which civil and military life went on together
cheek by jowl. In such places as Castelfrentano houses were often
shared with the families who owned them and were at Once homes
and billets. Even farther forward, some peasants preferred the
chances of war to separation from hearth and home, accepting danger
with an uncomprehending resignation. In such circumstances, when
a New Zealand patrol found footmarks in disputed ground near
Arielli, it could not be known whether they had been made by
Germans or Italians.

Civilian movement in the fighting zone was particularly noticeable
after Christmas when, with the front stabilised and comparatively
quiet, many Italians returned to their farms and villages. Numerous
refugees crossed from the German lines, some of them poorly clothed
and nourished and suffering from cold and exposure. The New
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Zealand troops gave them what assistance they could before they
were taken back to Castelfrentano by the Field Security Section for
handing over to the Italian civil authorities.